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[Discussion] Entosis Link Tactics and Ship Balance

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Iudicium Vastus
Doomheim
#521 - 2015-03-09 19:03:08 UTC
Wow, people are too lazy to undock a maulus or two to damp out any 'trollceptor' into tighter engagement range and rather claim sky is falling. Or a griffin is fine too.

[u]Nerf stabs/cloaks in FW?[/u] No, just.. -Fit more points -Fit faction points -Bring a friend or two with points (an alt is fine too)
PotatoOverdose
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#522 - 2015-03-09 19:03:29 UTC  |  Edited by: PotatoOverdose
Promiscuous Female wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:
As mentioned, the Eagle and the Cerb both annihilate Intys at extreme ranges.

There were, however, some questions from the slower parts of the class on how a cerb would hit an inty moving at, say, 137km from a TCU.

In order to help with that, I drew a picture. 2 Pictures, in fact. Enjoy.

Pic 1
Pic 2

orbiting a target would be extremely stupid in a trollceptor, you want to sit at a point far away from any celestials and burn at an angle off grid

Remind me, how far does your inty lock?

your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

So what you're saying is:

Anyone that can be assed to defend their space against a trollceptor will succeed. WELL DONE, FULL MARKS SHERLOCK.
Princess Cherista
Doomheim
#523 - 2015-03-09 19:03:57 UTC
Let only battleships and above have enough power grid for an entosis link. Wheres the risk and reward if you can fit a sov laser to a frigate?

At least battleships would be used for something again.
Promiscuous Female
GBS Logistics and Fives Support
#524 - 2015-03-09 19:04:08 UTC
Acuma wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Acuma wrote:
And if there's even one person in system you just play a game of jumping from gate to gate......if there's not even one person in system, why have sovereignty?

you leave the system and abuse your best-in-class warp speed to get to another beacon

And if they are also in a inty? Pretty sure they warp just as fast. How far do you think an inty can travel in the 12-40 or so minutes it takes to RF a system?

have you ever tried to keep up with another interceptor if you don't know where it is going and they have a head start
Jaiimez Skor
The Infamous.
#525 - 2015-03-09 19:04:43 UTC
Ilaister wrote:
While brawling doctrines would be far from optimal I think the HIC will see a fair bit of use as an Entosis platform from smaller groups.

Bubble up to hopefully catch reinforcements you're not getting reps anyway.


TBH I think you're more likely to see brick tanked Damnations and Proteus' with 600k+ EHP (even after the HP nerf for T3's a proteus will get 600/700k ehp if brick tanked).

As far as ways of fixing the concern of snaked out "trollceptors" then maybe as well as remote reps have a reduction to the effectiveness of propulsion mods, I disagree with disabling propulsion mods, but say a 60% reduction in the efficiency of propulsion module speed boosts should be plenty, so instead of doing 7km/s it'll only do about 4/4.5 which is easily cachable.
Promiscuous Female
GBS Logistics and Fives Support
#526 - 2015-03-09 19:04:55 UTC
PotatoOverdose wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:
As mentioned, the Eagle and the Cerb both annihilate Intys at extreme ranges.

There were, however, some questions from the slower parts of the class on how a cerb would hit an inty moving at, say, 137km from a TCU.

In order to help with that, I drew a picture. 2 Pictures, in fact. Enjoy.

Pic 1
Pic 2

orbiting a target would be extremely stupid in a trollceptor, you want to sit at a point far away from any celestials and burn at an angle off grid

Remind me, how far does your inty lock?

your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

So what you're saying is:

Anyone that can be assed to defend their space will succeed. WELL DONE, FULL MARKS SHERLOCK.

i hear that successfully defending one objective counts as defending the whole of your space when you have more than one system
Acuma
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#527 - 2015-03-09 19:05:08 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Acuma wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Acuma wrote:
And if there's even one person in system you just play a game of jumping from gate to gate......if there's not even one person in system, why have sovereignty?

you leave the system and abuse your best-in-class warp speed to get to another beacon

And if they are also in a inty? Pretty sure they warp just as fast. How far do you think an inty can travel in the 12-40 or so minutes it takes to RF a system?

have you ever tried to keep up with another interceptor if you don't know where it is going and they have a head start


Answering with a question? How far do you think an inty can travel in the 12-40 or so minutes it takes to RF a system? Cause they will know when you start to RF it........
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#528 - 2015-03-09 19:05:22 UTC
Arkon Olacar wrote:
Maximus Andendare wrote:
Arkon Olacar wrote:
Hero owns 98 systems in Catch, and 38 stations. We now need 136 mauluses to spend 4 hours a night sitting on an ihub/station. Except of course if these trollceptors have any kind of weapons, it can kill the maulus, so we partner them with a RLML caracal to prevent that from happening. There, we've kept one of the most densely populated regions in the game save from trollceptors, and it only costs us 1088 man hours per night!

I think you're missing the point. (Not just you, but you stated your (major Sov holder's) point eloquently enough.) If it's a bother to defend your sovereignty, then 1) maybe you should question the amount you possess and 2) if you're not willing to put forth the effort to defend it, then perhaps it should be lost. I'm not speaking specifically to the trollceptor "ruckus" per se; it's more addressing the complaints that defending sovereignty will be too difficult. Sovereignty shouldn't so easy to defend that you can do it with a corp full of dis-interested recruits. If you want to keep sov, then it should be something that you and your corp want to defend. As it is, CCP is giving Sov holders the ability to lock out people from reinforcing their structures until a time set by the owner. If the owner can't find it in them to defend their home in a nice four hour block of their choosing, then it sounds more like the sov holder should reassess their priorities.


Bolded the important part.

You've hit the nail on the head here. These mechanics cause too much grief for the defender to be worth the benefits of holding sov. The end result will be people moving out of sov null, with sov holders largely staging and living out of nearby NPC nullsec or lowsec, holding regions as a form of content generation rather than actually living there.

These mechanics as currently proposed would kill off nullsec, not revitalise it.


If you cant hold sov then someone else who can will. NPC null is not probably the heaven you are looking for as it's in essence a low sec with bubbles and without the recent low sec boosts (special spawns, etc).

However, living in there will make you good (better?) at pvp quite likely. At least compared to pressing F1 and orbiting anchor like in current "traditional" sov meta.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
Princess Cherista
Doomheim
#529 - 2015-03-09 19:05:32 UTC
PotatoOverdose wrote:
Anyone that can be assed to defend their space will succeed. WELL DONE, FULL MARKS SHERLOCK.

But who wants to chase interceptors around for 4 hours a night or whatever the primetime is for no fight and no kills. Do you??
Eli Apol
Definitely a nullsec alt
#530 - 2015-03-09 19:05:48 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

At which point the defender's objective of ... defending ...is complete

1-0 defence without even landing on grid.

agreed, they have managed to defend that one objective in significantly less agile ships

now the interceptor is RFing something else, better waddle out at 3 AU/s to the next beacon or bring a logarithmically increasing number of defenders to stop one person

Nope, just go back to ratting, let the local defenders in the new location deal with this minor pest.

It's like a wasp at a picnic, do you have one guy running around flapping at it shooing it away from all the diners or does each diner look after their own personal space and periodically raise a lazy hand to waft it away to its next place of rest?

but what would I know, I'm just a salvager
Promiscuous Female
GBS Logistics and Fives Support
#531 - 2015-03-09 19:06:03 UTC
Jaiimez Skor wrote:
Ilaister wrote:
While brawling doctrines would be far from optimal I think the HIC will see a fair bit of use as an Entosis platform from smaller groups.

Bubble up to hopefully catch reinforcements you're not getting reps anyway.


TBH I think you're more likely to see brick tanked Damnations and Proteus' with 600k+ EHP (even after the HP nerf for T3's a proteus will get 600/700k ehp if brick tanked).

As far as ways of fixing the concern of snaked out "trollceptors" then maybe as well as remote reps have a reduction to the effectiveness of propulsion mods, I disagree with disabling propulsion mods, but say a 60% reduction in the efficiency of propulsion module speed boosts should be plenty, so instead of doing 7km/s it'll only do about 4/4.5 which is easily cachable.

this is one of many options that would discourage the use of interceptors as the primary vehicle for contesting sov

however since ccp refuses to commit to any one of these, we are forced to assume that they aren't coming
Andrea Keuvo
Rusty Pricks
#532 - 2015-03-09 19:06:42 UTC
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

At which point the defender's objective of ... defending ...is complete

1-0 defence without even landing on grid.


The inty has now moved on and is RFing another structure. You can, of course, go chase him off again, over and over, for the next four hours.

Does this sound fun to you? How many days will you do this before you just stop logging in?
PotatoOverdose
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#533 - 2015-03-09 19:07:26 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
PotatoOverdose wrote:

Anyone that can be assed to defend their space will succeed. WELL DONE, FULL MARKS SHERLOCK.

i hear that successfully defending one objective counts as defending the whole of your space when you have more than one system

Yes, god forbid an alliance of hundreds, or thousands, or even *gasp* tens of thousands of players has to put more than 1 cerb/eagle/cormorant/ANYTHING in a constellation.

The trollceptor only wins if it is unopposed. Anything that is unopposed SHOULD win because *gasp* NO ONE IS OPPOSING IT.
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#534 - 2015-03-09 19:07:49 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Jaiimez Skor wrote:
Ilaister wrote:
While brawling doctrines would be far from optimal I think the HIC will see a fair bit of use as an Entosis platform from smaller groups.

Bubble up to hopefully catch reinforcements you're not getting reps anyway.


TBH I think you're more likely to see brick tanked Damnations and Proteus' with 600k+ EHP (even after the HP nerf for T3's a proteus will get 600/700k ehp if brick tanked).

As far as ways of fixing the concern of snaked out "trollceptors" then maybe as well as remote reps have a reduction to the effectiveness of propulsion mods, I disagree with disabling propulsion mods, but say a 60% reduction in the efficiency of propulsion module speed boosts should be plenty, so instead of doing 7km/s it'll only do about 4/4.5 which is easily cachable.

this is one of many options that would discourage the use of interceptors as the primary vehicle for contesting sov

however since ccp refuses to commit to any one of these, we are forced to assume that they aren't coming

So... this thread has no point but to lightning rod from the other thread that' nearing 200pages?

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Eli Apol
Definitely a nullsec alt
#535 - 2015-03-09 19:07:52 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
this is one of many options that would discourage the use of interceptors as the primary vehicle for contesting sov

however since ccp refuses to commit to any one of these, we are forced to assume that they aren't coming

You know how they made a thread to discuss the mod...and have 3 months to make a decision on any changes to it...yeah that.

but what would I know, I'm just a salvager
Tabyll Altol
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#536 - 2015-03-09 19:08:13 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Hello folks. I'm making this discussion thread to give you all a closer look at our design philosophy for the Entosis Link mechanics and the way we plan to balance the module.

We've been seeing quite a bit of concern from parts of the community that the Entosis Link mechanics will push people to pure evasion fits, the so called trollceptors. It goes without saying that we do not want the sov war meta turn into nothing but sensor boosting Interceptors, but we have plenty of time and tools to help ensure that scenario doesn't occur.

To explain our current approach and help focus the feedback, I want to discuss some of our specific goals for the Entosis Link mechanic itself.

As much as possible, the Entosis Link capture progress should reflect which group has effective military control of the grid.

At its core, the Entosis Link mechanic is a way for the server to tell who won (or is winning) a fight in a specific location. This is a surprisingly tough thing for the server to determine. The best way to win a structure or command node with the Entosis Link should be to gain effective control of the grid.
This means that there will always be an intermediate state where the grid is "contested" and neither side is making significant progress until the fight is resolved.


The optimal strategy for fighting over a location with the Entosis Link should be to gain effective control of the grid.

This is the other side of the coin. In practice it means that we should discourage mechanics that lead to indefinite stalemates over a structure or command node. This is the reason for the "no remote reps" condition on active Links. This is also the goal that trollceptors would contradict if they were to become dominant.


The Entosis Link itself should have the minimum possible effect on what ships and tactics players can choose.

Entosis Links will always have some effect on the types of ships and tactics people find viable for Sov warfare, but we should strive to keep those effects to a minimum. As much as possible, we should work towards a meta where whatever fleet concept would win the fight and control the grid would also be viable for using the Entosis Links.
This also means that we don't want to be using the Entosis Links to intentionally manipulate ship use. We've seen some people suggesting that we restrict Entosis Links to battleships, command ships or capital ships in order to buff those classes. Using the Entosis Link mechanics to artificially skew the meta in that way is not something we are interested in doing.
This goal is why we intend to use the lightest touch possible when working towards the first two goals. It would be easy to overreact to potentially unwanted uses of the Entosis Link by placing extremely harsh restrictions on the module, but we believe that by looking at the situation in a calm and measured manner we can find a good balance.


The restrictions and penalties on the Entosis Link should be as simple and understandable as possible.

This is a fairly obvious goal but I do think it's worth stating explicitly. If we can achieve similar results with two different sets of restrictions and penalties, we'll generally prefer to use the simpler and more understandable set. This also means that we'd generally prefer to use pre-existing mechanics that players will already be familiar with, rather than using completely new mechanics.


All in all, I want to make it very clear that we are going to make adjustments to the Entosis Link in order to get the best possible gameplay and to match these goals as well as possible. If we clearly see a situation emerging where any pure evasion tactics are going to become dominant, we will make changes to the Entosis Link to bring the gameplay back into balance. We expect that there will be many changes and tweaks to the Entosis Link module before launch, and more tweaks made after launch as needed.
We have all of the numerous tools of EVE module balance at our disposal and everything is on the table. We can use everything from module price, range, fittings, cap use, mass penalties, ship restrictions, speed limits and many many more. We intend to use as few of these dials as possible and use the lightest touch possible, but we do have the tools we need to reach these goals.

We would like this thread to become a place of discussion around the Entosis Link mechanics, the ships that you expect to use them on, and the tactics you foresee becoming popular. What issues do you foresee popping up? How do you think these goals should be adjusted or refocused? Which of the many module balance dials do you think would be the most intuitive?

Please keep discussion calm and reasonable. Remember that even though we're not making knee-jerk reactions, we are definitely listening and working to get this balance right.

Thanks
-Fozzie


I Would propose to "nerf" the t2 range form 250 km down to 30-50 km. And for the timer it should be necessary to let the link run the whole timer on the node.
Promiscuous Female
GBS Logistics and Fives Support
#537 - 2015-03-09 19:08:14 UTC
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

At which point the defender's objective of ... defending ...is complete

1-0 defence without even landing on grid.

agreed, they have managed to defend that one objective in significantly less agile ships

now the interceptor is RFing something else, better waddle out at 3 AU/s to the next beacon or bring a logarithmically increasing number of defenders to stop one person

Nope, just go back to ratting, let the local defenders in the new location deal with this minor pest.

It's like a wasp at a picnic, do you have one guy running around flapping at it shooing it away from all the diners or does each diner look after their own personal space and periodically raise a lazy hand to waft it away to its next place of rest?

here comes that "you must bring a logarithmically increasing number of dudes to counter the efforts of one person in a throwaway, yet uncatchable ship" thing again
Acuma
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#538 - 2015-03-09 19:09:11 UTC
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
Eli Apol wrote:
Promiscuous Female wrote:
your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

At which point the defender's objective of ... defending ...is complete

1-0 defence without even landing on grid.

agreed, they have managed to defend that one objective in significantly less agile ships

now the interceptor is RFing something else, better waddle out at 3 AU/s to the next beacon or bring a logarithmically increasing number of defenders to stop one person

Nope, just go back to ratting, let the local defenders in the new location deal with this minor pest.

It's like a wasp at a picnic, do you have one guy running around flapping at it shooing it away from all the diners or does each diner look after their own personal space and periodically raise a lazy hand to waft it away to its next place of rest?

here comes that "you must bring a logarithmically increasing number of dudes to counter the efforts of one person in a throwaway, yet uncatchable ship" thing again

Except you don't......you only need one inty with the link to counter your's.
Masao Kurata
Perkone
Caldari State
#539 - 2015-03-09 19:09:12 UTC
If the T2 link's price was increased to 200M ISK, how many hours per day would you be happy to spend killing and looting "trollceptors"?
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#540 - 2015-03-09 19:09:23 UTC
John McCreedy wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
You only have to defend the structure that is being attacked... A lone interceptor can only RF on structure at a time... A group of interceptors would simply require a similar group of defenders to respond. The main difference is that you can no longer wait hours for a more ideal formup and then attack with your full force, you have to act more quickly.


No you don't. You have to defend the entire lot because it takes two minutes to cycle the module which, if uninterrupted, presumably puts the structure in to reinforced mode (the blog is a bit unclear on this, it could use some clarification). So for example, let's say 3L3N has a Jump Bridge (I genuinely can't remember whether it does or not), it would be considered a strategically important system. Doubly so if it had an R64 or more there.


http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/66967/1/entosislinksimple_(1).jpg

If the enemy stops using the entosis link on the structure, the capture/RF processes is paused. They must keep the entosis link on for the first cycle + 10-30 minutes (depending on system sov indexes).

John McCreedy wrote:

The nearest station we can put a Jump Clone in is five jumps away. However, we have no idea how many are in local. Could be one ship, could be one hundred ships. You race over and if it's one ship, you can attempt to engage but the Interceptor is fit for speed so can easily keep out of your tackle or ECM or engagement range. You can go in a sniper but its sig radius is so low and transversal are so high you haven't a hope in hell's chance of tracking it. All he has to do is keep this up for two minutes and your sov is now vulnerable.


It takes two minutes to start the RF cycle. Then it takes another 10-30 minutes to complete the RF process, which you can pause by activating your own entosis module on the structure. If it is a lone ship, it is super easy to counter. If it is more, you still have 10-30 minutes to get intel, form up, and save the structure, with the ability to send your own super-speedy inty to pause the process while your allies form up and head on over.

John McCreedy wrote:

But the thing is, do you seriously think those out to cause mischief are going to stop at one system? It's easy for the majority of alliances to form up 51 Ceptors and attack 51 systems simultaneously and this is considered balance? You can fit for speed and attack them and you might kill them but they could cyno in a mate in a cloaky hauler full of interceptor hulls and fits, park it at a safe spot with a mobile fitting thingy and fit up a new captor and go at it again. Even if they don't, even if you successfully kill ship and pod, there's still 50 other systems to worry about.

Manpower becomes an issue because then there's escalation across all systems. They bring two, you bring two, so they bring three but you're a small alliance so haven't enough people online. The system we have right now, for all its faults, is unlikely to result in multiple systems attacked simultaneously. Smaller alliances are at a disadvantage as much as they are right now so it screws over everyone. It's this that's one of the big issues with the proposed changes.


If you are being attacked by 50 people, then you should probably attempt to defend with 50 people.... if you can't, then your **** will be reinforced, giving you 48 hours to get together a CTA and truly defend the structure. If you're being attacked by an overwhelming force, then you lose the system.

Smaller alliances will always be at a disadvantage, and nothing ccp implements will change that. The difference between this new system and the current system is you can actually initiate an attack and put the big guy's sov structures in danger. In the current system, they have to be really, really ambivalent before a small entity can have any impact on the sov of some huge coalition.